


System Loop

by madamteatime



Category: DBSK|Tohoshinki|TVXQ
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamteatime/pseuds/madamteatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I love you. I don’t want to leave you for another me. You’re mine, in this life and every other life.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	System Loop

**Author's Note:**

> Yeahhhh I know this AU has been done to death thanks to TVXQ's obsession with sci-fi concepts (I blame Changmin) but, well...this idea just wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> A vague continuation of [this post](http://madamteatime.tumblr.com/post/62615536756)

_“Changmin.”_

_“Hm?”_

_“I had the most awful dream just now. . .”_

\- - -

In a future where the pop music bubble finally bursts and the idol industry goes under the companies that had invested millions into the entertainment business are forced to find new ways to capture an increasingly apathetic audience. Groups are disbanded at an alarming rate, dismantled like so many old parts – and then quietly, insidiously, assembled again with improved faces and a new core.

They create androids no. 167 and 168 in the image of legends. At first they try to produce them as a team of five, but only two survive the rigorous calibration methods. Only two wake in the end, blinking and confused in the blinding light of the laboratory that birthed them.

They spend a week acclimatizing themselves to each other and their environment. The program requires a unique bond between each set of droids in order to cement the illusion of emotional ties. But with only two specimen in this group and the chime of a potential jackpot in their ears, the technicians decide to try a radical new software on them.

They decide to program them to love.

\- - -

“Number 167, state your name and code,” a voice intones from the ceiling of the resting pod.

167 turns his head towards the sound. Beside him his other half slumbers peacefully, long eyelashes fanned out against his cheeks. 167’s fingers linger possessively over the sleeping android’s barcode, the only blemish on his beautiful neck.

“Jung Yunho,” 167 says. “Code name: U-know.”

“State your purpose,” the bodiless voice says.

“This resting pod is too cold. I want to fetch some blankets.” 

“Your resting pod is set to normal temperature. My sensors indicate that your temperature receptors have accidentally been set to high sensitivity. The mistake will be rectified in the morning.”

167 – Yunho – mulls his over. “So – can we get a blanket or not?”

“No need for an extra blanket has been identified. Sleep well 167.”

“Wai – ”

The voice goes offline. Yunho makes a frustrated sound and glances down at the other android. He is no longer sleeping, and instead blinks sweet brown eyes up at Yunho.

“It’s okay,” 168 says softly.

“It’s not okay. You’re shivering.”

“They’ll fix it in the morning.”

Yunho sighs and lies down beside him again. They curl against each other, and 168’s head comes to rest under his chin.

“I’m fine. You’re warm,” 168 says sleepily. Yunho pulls him closer, fingers brushing over the barcode embedded in the back of his neck.

A neat row of words are printed under the vertical black lines, just large enough to be barely legible.

_Android no. 168_  
 _Name: Shim Changmin  
_ _Code: Max_

\- - -

In the morning they are re-calibrated again, for the last time, then sent upstairs for memory extraction and addition.

The week since they woke fades and is replaced by vague images of a childhood, of family and friends and school and other normal, mundane things that every human is made up of. Except they are not human – beneath skin and muscle they are pure titanium and steel, perfect and extraordinary – and entirely, excruciatingly unaware of it.

Declared ready, they are dressed up and sent upstairs for the CEO to take a look at them.

The only constant, vivid presence in their forged stream of memories is each other. 

\- - -

They exceed every expectation the company has for them.

Yunho can dance and Changmin can sing, and between them they create a performance on stage that enthralls even their most skeptic spectators. Audiences are addicted – to their voices, to their moves – but most of all to the titillating, forbidden allure of their relationship. In a revolutionary new concept they make no secret of their desire for each other, kissing openly on stage, hands lingering and touching for too-long moments. 

Their fans love it. The parents hate it, which naturally wins them even more rabid followers. The crowd screams lust and they answer it laughingly, happily, twined around each other in a series of provocative and teasing poses, licking chocolate off glittering collarbones and whispering sin into flushed ears.

Their albums sell millions, regularly breaking opening day sales records.

And in the midst of all the glitz and glamour they keep coming back to each other, still sleep curled up in the same bed every night, still fuck like it’s the first time, for one simple reason: they are hopelessly, irrevocably in love.

\- - -

“Closer – Yunho, stand closer to him.”

Yunho shuffles closer, his arm sliding around Changmin slim waist. They’re shirtless and clad in tight black jeans, baby oil smeared across their torsos. Earlier they had mock-wrestled for the camera, and a fine sheen of sweet from their exertions glimmers over the oil.

“Yes,” the photographer hisses. “Changmin - turn your head towards the light?”

Changmin turns as instructed. His nose bumps against Yunho’s cheek and he smiles.

“Hello light,” he murmurs.

Yunho fights not to smile back. “Hush, you’ll ruin the shot.”

“This is the shot, silly. Us whispering together – this is the cover shot right here.” Changmin’s fingers move to caress his jaw and Yunho meets his gaze. They breathe in each other’s air, eyes locked.

“That’s it!” the photographer crows somewhere in the background.

“Kiss me,” Yunho breathes.

Everything around them fades. Changmin kisses him, slow and intense, like honey igniting in his veins. They press against each other, slide and rut and gasp. Changmin pushes him up against the wall and takes his mouth, again and again, until Yunho is weak and throbbing with want.

The room is silent. Their photographer looks like he might faint. Changmin draws back lazily and licks his lips.

“Did you get what you needed?” he asks.

The man swallows and nods.

“Good.”

Not giving him time to protest, he drags a dazed Yunho back to their dressing room and slams the door behind them.

\- - -

“Changmin – oh fuck – oh, right there, please!” Yunho gasps and arches, the muscles of his back bunching up. Changmin has him bent over their kitchen counter and is driving into him with shattering force, his fingers digging bruises into Yunho’s hips. Yunho mewls and writhes and scrabbles against the bench top. His breath fogs up the marble and he presses a flushed cheek against it.

The phone rings. Changmin ignores it, brow furrowed and teeth digging into his lower lip as he thrusts into Yunho’s tight heat.

Yunho’s hand inches towards the ringing phone.

“Leave it,” Changmin growls and flips him. He hoists Yunho up onto the bench top, sends him sprawling on his back with his legs splayed apart and shoves back into him. Yunho cries out.

The phone goes to voice mail.

Over the sound of Yunho’s cheerful answering machine message Changmin swears and fucks harder, chasing completion.

“ – Leave a message after the beep, thanks! _beeeep_ Yunho, I’m just calling to remind you that you have a meeting at the company headquarters tomorrow –”

“Oh oh _oh_ ,” Yunho’s moans almost drown out the message but Changmin goes silent and listens intently, his pace slowing.

“What meeting?” he pants.

“Huh?” Yunho’s head lolls, sweat sticking his hair to his neck. “I don’t kn – oh god, please – ”

“What meeting is manager hyung reminding you about?”

“What – who cares – ” Yunho pants, completely gone.

Changmin pulls out of him and picks up the phone. “What meeting?” he demands, cutting their manager off mid-sentence.

Yunho swears and tumbles off the counter.

Changmin has a short, curt conversation with their manager before hanging up and turning back to him, by which time Yunho looks magnificently pissed off.

“What the fuck,” he growls.

“You have a meeting tomorrow,” Changmin says, face blank.

“Who gives a fuck.” Yunho pushes him onto the floor and straddles him. “You were the one who told me not to answer it.”

He sinks down on Changmin’s length with a satisfied groan, head thrown back and fingers digging into Changmin’s shoulders. Changmin shudders and clutches at him.

It’s quick after that, both of them too close to the edge to hold off much longer. Yunho bounces on top of him and works himself in quick, eager strokes, his chest heaving, soft under Changmin’s questing fingers. They come within moments of each other and Yunho’s voice breaks mid-note as he arches and covers Changmin in seed. Changmin grunts, tightens, and comes deep inside him, Yunho’s shudders pulling him swiftly over the edge.

They pant against each other for a moment, shaken loose by orgasm. Yunho slides down and curls around him, practically purring.

“I hate those meetings,” Changmin says into the silence. “You always come back different.”

Yunho hums unconcernedly and kisses the smooth stretch of skin at the back of his neck. “Different how?”

“Just – ” Changmin’s eyes darken. “Different.”

“You have monthly meetings too,” Yunho points out.

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t mention how every month they become harder to remember.

\- - -

Needless to say, Changmin figures it out first.

Ironically, it happens through a slip of pure human error, an edge of Yunho’s barcode left uncovered from his last check-up. Changmin’s fingers come up against the bump while they lay sunbathing on their balcony one day and pause mid-rub.

Yunho whines and bumps his hand with his head.

“Massage,” he pouts. He’s sprawled across Changmin on their swing, pushing them back and forth lazily with one foot on the ground.

Changmin resumes kneading his neck but carefully this time, feeling out the edges of the label embedded under Yunho’s skin. His expression sharpens.

“Yunho,” he says softly. “Get up.”

Yunho mumbles mutinously but allows himself to be pulled upright. Changmin turns him and stares at the edge of the barcode on the nape of his neck, the faint impression of numbers and letters printed in a neat little row.

“What is it?” Yunho asks.

Changmin takes his hand. “Get up,” he says.

_Get up._

_Wake up._

\- - -

Their world shatters and falls away.

The haze of distant memories lifts and leaves clinical white lab coats behind. The revelation comes as a surprise to nobody but them; indeed, they had been half-expected to figure it out sooner or later. Their management sees no reason for panic, only acknowledgement and acceptance.

That first night after they’re told the truth Yunho stabs himself with a knife until he hits metal, his scream of pain bringing Changmin skidding into the kitchen. Changmin pries the knife out of his hand and yells at him to stop, to get a grip, and then that he’s calling a doctor, he’s calling the ambulance –

Yunho sinks back against the kitchen cupboards and shakes his head and laughs, because they don’t need a doctor when they get hurt they need a fucking mechanic, someone with lots of tools who knows how to put metal things together. His laughter shifts Changmin from anger to confusion to distress. He takes Yunho’s face between his hands and presses their foreheads together.

“Hyung, please,” he whispers.

Yunho hiccups and stares at him until he goes cross-eyed. “Changmin,” he breathes like it’s a revelation. “I love you.”

Changmin eyes him, wary. “I know,” he says. “I love you too.”

A bitter, blissful smile spreads across Yunho’s face. “Yes. Because a program told you to. I love you because it’s coded into my system, because I had no choice in the matter, because we were created to entertain and tease and perform and that. Is. All.”

Changmin’s stomach drops. “No. No – ”

“Don’t touch me,” Yunho whispers, and Changmin stumbles away from him with betrayal stuck in the base of his throat.

\- - -

Despite it all, they have to keep going.

They have to keep doing the performances, the touching, the kissing, the ritual sacrifice of privacy and self-respect. Despite it all they still ache for each other every night, still need the closeness and the comfort of touch.

But Yunho’s kisses taste like reluctance now, his mind at war with what every fiber of his being wants, which is to love Changmin and love him completely. Practical, pragmatic Changmin accepts their reality quickly and with little internal anguish – what difference does it make whether he loves Yunho because of a code or because of a false memory, when he knows deep inside that he would love Yunho even without those things programmed into him.

But Yunho has always been something of a romantic. A glitch, they call it – a bug in his system they never quite managed to smooth out. Yunho wants fire and passion and silly things like flowers, not careful lines of code and a vague (false) impression of being courted. He grows quiet and withdrawn, mired in circles of endless self-doubt, bogged down by listlessness. When Changmin kisses him at night – increasingly desperately – Yunho is limp in his arms, like an overwrought ragdoll. Changmin pleads with him to snap out of it, cries into his neck until Yunho rocks him in his arms and whispers apologies into his hair.

“I’m sorry. Don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be you again.”

“I don’t know who that is anymore,” Yunho whispers, and Changmin cries harder.

And then finally, inevitably, the impossible happens: Yunho falters on stage. Designed specifically to perform, somehow, some way, he freezes up in the middle of a live for a full minute and there’s no way to hide it. Confusion ripples across their audience as Changmin tries desperately to block Yunho with his body and whispers urgently in his ear to wake up. But Yunho is unresponsive, as though his system’s shut down, and when he snaps out of it he’s sluggish and slow to respond.

They give him a full tune-up after the performance but the technicians can’t pinpoint the problem.

“Maybe he’s just getting old,” one of them says, and somehow the assertion sticks. Dark whispers settle over them like a cloud, and Changmin finds himself swimming alone against the tide.

“They’re going to decommission me,” Yunho tells him over dinner one night. “I overheard manager talking to the head technician. They think I’m getting old. Faulty.”

Changmin’s fork clatters to his plate. “How can you be getting old when we were made together and I’m perfectly fine?”

Yunho shrugs. “Don’t worry. They’ll just make a new me and reprogram you to love him. You’ll never know the difference.”

There’s a short silence. Then Changmin places both hands under the table, heaves upwards and flings it to the side. Their glasses and plates smash into pieces across the tiles. Furious, he grabs Yunho and pins him against the floor.

“How dare you. How dare you not fight to live. _How dare you not fight for me!_ " 

“I – ” Yunho starts, startled.

“Fuck you Yunho! Fuck your insecurities and fuck your prolonged identity crisis! You want to know how I accepted the truth and moved on? It’s because out of all the shitty things this company has done to us the one thing they did right was programming me to love you. And I never once questioned the truth of that love, because it’s not just in my fucking code, it’s in every inch of me, every bolt and screw and piece of metal inside me. But you – you’ve done nothing but question it since we found out.”

Yunho stares up at him, stunned into silence. Changmin breathes hard, angry and fearful in equal measure – until Yunho’s face softens and he leans up and kisses him, kisses all the pain and uncertainty away.

Kisses him like he loves him in the beating core of his metal heart.

\- - -

“We’re decommissioning you,” manager tells Yunho a month later, and Changmin has to exert great force of will not to scream and splatter the man’s skull all over the inside of his pristine office.

Their fingers link under the desk, tighten, and don’t let go until they get home and are pressed together under the shower, mouths open and wet against hot skin.

“They can’t take you,” Changmin whispers.

Yunho is silent.

“They can’t – ”

“Come with me,” he whispers into Changmin’s hair.

Changmin goes very still.

“What?”

“Come with me,” Yunho says. “End it with me. If we can’t be together in life then let’s be together in eternity. In oblivion.”

He draws Changmin’s hand to the left side of his chest, over the hidden code panel under his chest cavity. They know the self-destruct codes; had known them, somehow, even when they thought they were human. Changmin’s fingers tremble against his skin.

“I – ” he starts.

“I love you,” Yunho breathes out against his temple. “I don’t want to leave you for another me. You’re mine, in this life and every other life.”

Changmin closes his eyes and nods.

\- - -

In the darkness of their apartment they cut each other open, skin numbed by local anesthesia. Changmin peels back the skin and muscle and tissue of Yunho’s chest cavity and pries the code panel open with blood and grease-stained fingers. His breath hitches as Yunho does the same to his.

The number pad blinks green light under their fingertips.

_1_

They press the first number at precisely the same time. One millisecond out of sync and one of them would expire before the other.

_1_

Changmin meets Yunho’s eye. His lips tremble, soft mouth parting on a fearful gasp.

_0_

Yunho draws closer and kisses him. Blood slides down their sides and their fingers almost slip on the keypads.

_1_

“I’m scared hyung,” Changmin whispers, brown eyes wide with slight panic.

“I’m here. I’m not going to leave you. I’ll always find you. . .”

_0_

Changmin buries his face in Yunho’s shoulder and takes a deep breath.

“Find me,” he whispers.

_7_

The code panel flashes red. A message scrolls across its screen.

_Self destruct activated. System initiating permanent shut down._

The light goes out of their eyes together, the steady pulse of mechanical heartbeats stilled simultaneously.

In the darkness of a Seoul apartment two lifeless androids tumble to the floor, now nothing more than a pleasing arrangement of screws and bolts.

\- - -

_“It was just a dream hyung. Go back to sleep.”_

_“It felt so real. . .”_

_Changmin rolls over and flings an arm around him, pulling Yunho close. His fingers brush against a raised bump on the back of Yunho’s neck but, half-asleep, he ignores the oddity._

_In the silence of their bedroom he murmurs, “Well, at least you found me again.”_

_Yunho shifts closer and curls into Changmin’s body._

_“Yeah. . .yeah I guess I did.”_


End file.
